It started back in Israel during the first Gulf War when Noma Bar was sitting in a shelter with his family, reading a newspaper. He came upon the international symbol for ‘radioactivity’ (black on a yellow background) and as he was looking at it, he discovered two eyebrows and a mustache, and saw in it the image of former Iraqi Dictator, Saddam Hussein who at the time possessed a threatening nuclear arms stockpile.
So Noma Bar sketched his silhouette around the symbol, added a military cap and found that it looked a lot like him. That ‘Saddam image’ was one of the images he showed people when he moved to London in 2001 and was what gave him his first commission for Time Out London.

Noma Bar is an artist that doesn’t only draw what people look like, he draws what they do or stand for. He turns faces into logos or objects that relate to the story of that specific person and his best faces are as memorable as they are minimal as he mostly uses only a few lines and colours to convey an entire character or social commentary. A well-placed gun becomes the unmistakable wingspan of a dove of peace or a guitar head and harmonica are Bob Dylan’s eyes and mouth. It’s also his masterful manipulation of negative space (the space around the figure or object he’s drawing) that has awarded him, over a twenty-year career, unprecedented credibility in the field of Design and Illustration. Now a highly-prolific artist, Noma Bar is consistently sought after for his iconic illustration, be it charged political imagery or uncanny juxtapositions to grace the book covers of novels by authors such as Haruki Murakami and Don DeLillo. Also an author in his own right, Noma Bar has his own publications including Negative Space, Guess Who?, Chineasy (a book teaching the meaning of Chinese characters via a visual language) and in 2017, Bittersweet, a volume of five books with Thames and Hudson.

In spite of the demand for it, the artist’s work comes from a quiet place, from hours spent sketching in the open air, within the calm confines of his back-garden studio or in complete solitude in the woods behind his home in London. First he layers sketches by hand before producing the final renderings on the computer, most often working through ideas on set projects he’s been asked to complete. For his 2014 series with Eyestorm however, the artist was pleased to create fine art images that were not editorial commissions, but rather came from his own, unguided artistic expression. Facing Up, Evolutionary Thought, Look Out and Which Came First? emerged as some of the boldest and largest screenprint editions that Eyestorm has ever created with any artist. The four are powerful graphic illustrations which cleverly utlilise negative space to conceal secondary images of animals within it. They have been hugely successful as they were printed by hand, allowing for the first time the use of textured inks and metallic sheens to add even more layers of thought-provoking detail. The works have been featured at many international art fairs and are mostly collected in Singapore, New York and Hong Kong market for their universally-appealing humor.

Never content to stop his experimentation with surface-textures, and in the same year as he was nominated for Designer of the Year award, Noma Bar created exclusive editions of the animal prints, this time in pure gold leaf. Over one thousand hand-lain sheets of 22-carat gold leaf make up the background of these prints and a glossy black ink finishes the image. The softer, more personal approach that comes with making high-texture prints has made the gold-leaf editions highly sought-after with only one or two still available. Owning an embellished print creates an opportunity for a collector to covet something not only of pure craft and splendor, but an artwork which often see excellent returns on the secondary market. If there’s the inclination to invest in Noma Bar but on a smaller scale in terms of the size of the artwork, Full Bodied 1 and Full Bodied 2 are classic examples of the artist’s sense of fun and good humour and would make excellent first-purchases. They have art-deco-inspired colour schemes and depict the chemistry between a couple in two different ‘scenes’. The first of the two sees a first-date kiss over a glass of wine and a cheekier intimacy follows for Full Bodied 2, with both prints reminding us of the artist’s extraordinary capacity for witty, lateral thinking.

Noma Bar is an artist of immense international acclaim via his personal mantra of delivering art of ‘maximum communication with minimum elements’ and the degree of artistic exposure he has gleaned is secondary to no other artist who has come on board with Eyestorm in the last five years. He expertly captures the spirit of a person or the heart of an issue with arresting clarity and humour and his instantly recognizable style has established him as one of the world’s most in-demand illustrators. His ingenuity in turning complexity into simplicity and ultimately his dedication to these principles means that he continues to deliver, time and time again, with universal elegance.

You can find print editions by Noma Bare here and on our Arts Trend page which shows popularity of the artist’s work in specific locations across the globe.